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Charles Krauthammer covers the last debate.
… President Obama gained a narrow victory on points, as borne out by several flash polls. The margin was small, paling in comparison to Romney’s 52-point victory in the first debate.
At Hofstra, Obama emerged from his previous coma to score enough jabs to outweigh Romney’s haymaker, his dazzling takedown of the Obama record when answering a disappointed 2008 Obama voter.
That one answer might account for the fact that, in two early flash polls, Romney beat Obama on the economy by 18 points in one poll, 31 in the other. That being the overriding issue, the debate is likely to have minimal effect on the dynamics of the race.
The one thing Obama’s performance did do is re-energize his demoralized base — the media, in particular. But at a price.
The rub for Obama comes, ironically enough, out of Romney’s biggest flub in the debate, the Libya question. That flub kept Romney from winning the evening outright. But Obama’s answer has left him a hostage to fortune. Missed by Romney, missed by the audience, missed by most of the commentariat, it was the biggest gaffe of the entire debate cycle: Substituting unctuousness for argument, Obama declared himself offended by the suggestion that anyone in his administration, including the U.N. ambassador, would “mislead” the country on Libya.
This bluster — unchallenged by Romney — helped Obama slither out of the Libya question unscathed. Unfortunately for Obama, there is one more debate — next week, entirely on foreign policy. The burning issue will be Libya and the scandalous parade of fictions told by this administration to explain away the debacle. …
Daniel Henninger on the un-president.
Conventional wisdom holds that Barack Obama “lost” in Denver because he lacked intensity. He brought his A-game to Hofstra this week. There’s still a problem.
The most significant event in the 2012 presidential election remains the Romney miracle bump after the first debate. If Mr. Romney wins the election, analysts and scholars will spend years picking apart the Denver debate the way they have the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate.
Richard Nixon didn’t lose that election because of his five o’clock shadow, and Barack Obama isn’t going to win or lose his presidency because he lacks intensity. What we learned on Long Island is that Mr. Obama lacks something more damaging to an incumbent—a sense of presidential responsibility.
One of the most familiar Obama positions—repeated at every campaign stop—is that he “inherited” a bad economy from George W. Bush. Set aside that whatever the cause, everyone concedes he took over a tough situation. More to the point is Mr. Obama’s compulsive insistence that anything awry in the economy during his first term is “not my fault.”
The Bush-did-it narrative was a banality by the time of the debates. Then came Benghazi. Within days, the political question at the center of the incident was: What did the White House know and when did it know it? No matter one’s politics, it became impossible not to see that the White House was intent on putting “distance” between the president and responsibility for the security breaches. .
Vice President Biden in his debate with Paul Ryan explicitly transferred early responsibility to some offshore cloud called “the intelligence community.” Then this week, Secretary of State Clinton accepted formal responsibility. By now, this had the look of Hillary taking the fall for the president’s candidacy.
So came the moment late in the Hofstra debate when moderator Candy Crowley looked at Mr. Obama and asked: “Does the buck stop with your secretary of state as far as what went on here?”
Staring back, the president clutched for a second. He looked like a fourth-grader being confronted in front of the whole class by Miss Crowley of all our childhood nightmares. That moment revealed the problem: At the core of Barack Obama’s persona and his presidency is a constant instinct to deniability. …
Here’s some change; Orlando Sentinel endorses Romney. Last cycle they supported his predecessor.
Two days after his lackluster first debate performance, President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes got a timely boost. The government’s monthly jobless report for September showed the nation’s unemployment rate fell below 8 percent for the first time since he took office.
If that were the only metric that mattered, the president might credibly argue that the U.S. economy was finally on the right track. Unfortunately for him, and for the American people, he can’t.
Economic growth, three years into the recovery, is anemic. Family incomes are down, poverty is up. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, highlighted these and other hard truths in this week’s second debate.
Even the September jobless numbers deserve an asterisk, because more than 4 million Americans have given up looking for work since January 2009.
And while the nation’s economy is still sputtering nearly four years after Obama took office, the federal government is more than $5 trillion deeper in debt. It just racked up its fourth straight 13-figure shortfall.
We have little confidence that Obama would be more successful managing the economy and the budget in the next four years. For that reason, though we endorsed him in 2008, we are recommending Romney in this race. …
Same change from Chicago’s Jewish paper; Chicago Jewish Star.
… We like Mr. Romney- and strongly endorse his candidacy for president- because of his moderate, small-government views
We like Mr. Romney because he is able to travel to a hot-bed area like Israel and- openly, unapologetically, and accurately- commend the Jewish state for its achievements, while frankly acknowledging that it is Palestinian recalcitrance which has denied peace to the area.
We like Mr. Romney because he understands the need to create jobs by providing the right environment for the private sector to do so.
Finally, we like Mr. Romney because he, and his running mate Paul Ryan, have announced that they believe in accountability. The buck stops in the Oval Office.
Finally we like Mr. Romney in comparison to his opponent. The administration of Barack Obama has been a failure. …
Instapundit tells us another paper sees the light.
Another large paper abandons Obama in favor of Romney. The Reno Gazette- Journal, which endorsed Obama in 2008, switches to Romney, telling its readers:
“A vote to re-elect Obama promises four more years of the same. In the two debates between the two candidates so far (a third, on foreign affairs, is scheduled for Monday), the president has shown little understanding of how his failures are affecting the nation, and he hasn’t offered any tangible proposals to change course.”
Precisely.
It is not just the president, house Democrats have significant headwinds also. Josh Kraushaar explains;
One of House Democrats’ favorite talking points this cycle has dwelled on one statistic: the number of Republicans holding seats in districts that President Obama carried in 2008 and the newly created seats that the president won (66). It’s a reminder of the days of yore, intended to demonstrate that the midterm wave in 2010 was something of a fluke. But the real revelation this year – and why House Democrats aren’t close to netting the 25 seats to take back the majority – is how far the president’s standing has fallen from four years ago.
With Mitt Romney running ahead of Obama nationally, 2004 is shaping up to be a much more instructive baseline for the upcoming elections than Obama’s historic win in 2008. Indeed, only eight House Republicans hold districts that John Kerry won in 2004. That, more than anything, explains how the Democratic expectation of being within striking distance of the majority is falling far short of reality. Call it the 2008 illusion.
One of the most striking discrepancies between the perception of this year’s electorate and the realities behind it is taking place in Obama’s home state of Illinois, one of the few states gerrymandered to maximize opportunities for Democrats. Four House Republicans – Reps. Joe Walsh, Bobby Schilling, Judy Biggert and Robert Dold — were drawn into districts that Obama carried with at least 60 percent in 2008. In two other districts where the incumbent retired (one Democrat, one Republican), the president carried more than 55 percent of the vote. All of this pointed to significant Democratic gains in the state, providing them a bouncing-off point for a comeback.
That still could happen, but it’s looking a lot less likely several weeks before November. …
All of which makes Jennifer Rubin’s look at Romney’s cabinet timely.
… Both in Massachusetts as governor and in his presidential campaign, Romney has had women as the face of his operation. The campaign communications team is regarded as amiable but lacking the heft, authority and access to the candidate of the type the White House communications director and press secretary would require. Among his campaign advisers, Romney has a fleet of women who are experts with the press (Kerry Healey, Barbara Comstock, who made a splash on MSNBC this week). If he doesn’t select a woman, look for someone with executive-branch experience. Several top Republicans, including one former White House communications person, have floated the name of Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department spokesman and one of the better Romney surrogates.
For White House chief of staff, Romney could go with a Boston inner-circle member such as Healey or Beth Myers. However, he will have a huge legislative agenda in which inside experience and skills in legislative relations are key. Ed Gillespie, who seized control of the campaign and whipped it into shape when it hit the skids in August, is a natural fit. Portman, who has held two White House posts and has House and Senate experience, should not be overlooked. (He would likely be on the short list for Treasury as well.) From the campaign, Lanhee Chen, policy director, is in line for domestic policy adviser.
What about Democrats? Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who caucuses with the Democrats, is frequently mentioned for the secretary of state job. A bold move would be to select a former or current Democratic senator such as Evan Bayh, John Breaux (an early advocate of premium-support Medicare) or Joe Manchin. Nabbing a top Democrat involved in bipartisan budget deals (Erskine Bowles would be the most daring) would certainly signal that Romney wants to get a deal done.
Romney has consistently surprised media elites and D.C. insiders. Look for his cabinet to be more diverse and interesting than previous GOP cabinets.
Dilbert endorses Romney. He follows a circuitous route but gets there finally. And he makes a few good points about our nutty drug wars.
… For the record, President Obama did not technically kill anyone to get elected. That was just a hypothetical example. But he is putting an American citizen in jail for 10 years to life for operating medical marijuana dispensaries in California where it is legal under state law. And I assume the President – who has a well-documented history of extensive marijuana use in his youth – is clamping down on California dispensaries for political reasons, i.e. to get reelected. What other reason could there be?
One could argue that the President is just doing his job and enforcing existing Federal laws. That’s the opposite of what he said he would do before he was elected, but lying is obviously not a firing offense for politicians.
Personally, I’d prefer death to spending the final decades of my life in prison. So while President Obama didn’t technically kill a citizen, he is certainly ruining this fellow’s life, and his family’s lives, and the lives of countless other minor drug offenders. And he is doing it to advance his career. If that’s not a firing offense, what the hell is?
Romney is likely to continue the same drug policies as the Obama administration. But he’s enough of a chameleon and a pragmatist that one can’t be sure. And I’m fairly certain he’d want a second term. He might find it “economical” to use federal resources in other ways than attacking California voters. And he is vocal about promoting states’ rights, so he’s got political cover for ignoring dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is legal.
So while I don’t agree with Romney’s positions on most topics, I’m endorsing him for president starting today. I think we need to set a minimum standard for presidential behavior, and jailing American citizens for political gain simply has to be a firing offense no matter how awesome you might be in other ways.
If you missed the Al Smith Dinner, Andrew Malcolm has the details.
Regular readers here will know of our fascination with political history, and the lessons it often offers for the present and beyond.
The unlikely and yet strangely appealing coincidental appearance Thursday evening of both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama at the 67th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City is too tempting to pass up a recollection of this Smith fellow. And share the candidates’ one-liners in a video below.
The white tie dinner, actually a fundraiser for the charitable foundation established in 1946 by Cardinal Spellman, is a roast. It offers politicians — and in leap years, the presidential candidates — an opportunity to tell jokes written for them to present a more human face to the public.
We have, as usual, the C-SPAN video of the full affair below. We’ve seen Obama perform well at delivering one-liners at gridiron dinners the last few years. But like this fall’s first presidential debate, the Al Smith dinner offered Romney a golden opportunity to explode the myth of his robotic Kelvin-level personality perpetuated by more than $200 million in opposition ads over this past summer.
The fact that the former governor looked surprisingly human, organized, well-versed, direct and tough-speaking back on Oct. 3 is still producing poll benefits for him, as we wrote here Thursday morning.
Romney, like the president, delivered his jokes with deft timing last night. He claimed that he’d been asked how he prepared for the debates: First, he said, he abstained from alcohol for 65 years. He then looked for the biggest straw man he could find–and Big Bird never saw him coming.
Speaking of Sesame Street, Romney said, the night’s dinner was being brought to diners by the letter O and the number 16 trillion. …